Equipoise
by CraftyNotepad
Summary: Equipoise   /ˈekwəˌpoiz/: noun: balance of forces or interests
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note**: If you like time traveling as much as our pet caveman, then you're warmly invited to check out the Phil of the Future group here at FanFiction. Right next door to 2149, our characters originally hale from 2121 - my, how things did change. Don't bother to make a reservation, Time Traveler - we already know when you're coming.

**Equipoise**

by CraftyNotepad

Commander Taylor should have been happy with the latest radio message. Four days out from the settlement, the first harvest of iron stalks were ready to begin their journey to Terra Nova. The move was laying claim to considerable resources: personnel reassigned as harvesters, security pulled off the security of Terra Nova, and every vehicle they could adapt - which was every vehicle running - to haul the precious stalks back to the settlement. It was a high-stakes gamble, and so its payoff had to be worth it. Damn Sixers and "their" asteroid. Terra Nova needed metal.

Up in the 22nd Century, pilgrims were considered lucky refugees - getting out while the getting was good - and some kept that mindset for a short time after their arrival. That is until they realized that this was now home; next came the understanding that they were alone to build their future, the future. Call Terra Nova an outpost, a settlement, or a second chance, it came down to it being an island unto itself, a seed tossed down the time tunnel which could germinate, sprout, and flourish, or sadly whither and die. Metal would make the difference.

Sixers had limited ammo, but unlimited access to the sky metal. The "true" colonists weren't so lucky. Early mining of the asteroidial mineral, primarily industrial age iron, was promising. The third pilgrimage started the search for the metal; the fourth literally stumbled across it, and the fifth had set up a decent-sized smelter at the source. Production was low, but decent quality. It was the first thing the Sixers stole, smelter and all. Damn, Terra Nova required metal.

Metal wasn't needed to build a house, transact business or cook in. It was needed if Terra Nova was going to be more than a century-long camping trip. Taylor knew that all this wonderful future technology was only going to be used as long as the batteries lasted. If this whole damn expedition was going to matter, it would have to become self-sufficient fast. Pilgrims kept coming. Specialists in their own fields: scientists, engineers, farmers, ... and all these talented people required tools to transform this primordial world into the future of mankind, and tools? Tools required metal. Resources, it always came down to limited resources, whether in 2149 or 85 million years earlier. Mass. There was a limit on how much mass could be transported down from the future. Every rifle sent stood in for a plow that could not, which represented empty stomachs come harvest time. He knew that each motorcycle denied a pilgrim passage, six families refused passage for every truck he requisitioned, and that for all the power that computers provided, they were useless without skilled operators knowing how to use them. Terra Nova was all about saving humanity's future and people its most precious resource, so they were at the top of Taylor's must have list.

Iron stalks were a serendipitous discovery. The field team had been assigned to assess if the "local" swamp produced sufficient methane to make it a viable energy source as the colony thrived and its demands grew ever more. Planning like this was second nature to Commander Nathaniel Taylor. Wars were won by logistics and support, by the food that could be delivered to the soldier aiming his rifle even more so than the extra ammunition being delivered. The commander had to deal with daily security, dinosaurs, deranged Sixers, piss that passed for coffee, and this, the establishment of the infrastructure Terra Nova needed to survive and prosper long after he was gone. With every problem his people had faced so far, ten years' experience had taught him an irritating truth: every year it was harder to support Terra Nova. As the colony grew, there were more mouths to feed, more hands and not enough saws and axes, and shoes? People wore through them five times faster here. No cows for leather, either. One brachiosaurus could clothe and shoe every man, woman, and child in Terra Nova, but everything would have to be shut down to process the hide before the stench attracted every predator with two nostrils, and the cadaver would stink anyway, achieving the same unwanted result. As a result, for the security of the colony, leather acquisition was restricted to scavenging from carcasses of previously gorged dinosaurs. It was just a matter of doing the best with what they had.

Ignited, the swamp gas proved to be viable; however, the colonists just didn't have the resources to spare to begin a natural gas refinery, not with the Sixers scanning for new targets to swipe from the colony. This iron stalk harvest was going out on a limb as it was. An old-fashioned convoy, armed, would make a run from the bog all the way back to the compound gate. Burn logs and you're left with ashes and charred wood. Set iron stalks alight and when you're left with in its ash, an ash high in iron content. The biologists learned that it wasn't the stalks themselves which harvested the mineral, but their microbes with a high affinity for iron. These little critters lived inside the plants' structures and when the micro tenants expired, their iron laden bodies remained. Run a magnet through the ashes and metal harvesting was done.

Sounded easy when the scientists proposed it as an alternative to bargaining with the Sixers, for ore. Taylor mentally kicked himself for giving the green light to the idea after being shown some table top lab experiments. It appeared like such an easy way to upset the Sixers' hold over the colony. That was all before he realized the enormity of this operation and exposing so many people and their vehicles to Sixer attacks. Four days travel, six days of harvesting under armed guard, and six, maybe seven days for the heavily laden convoy to make it back to Terra Nova alive. Dangerous for everyone going and just as dangerous for those left behind. The Sixers could easily decided to hit the colony gate with reinforcements days away. Taylor hoped he'd win this gamble

A knock at the communication room's doorway, it was a messenger with a single name for the commander: McIntyre. Teeth clenched.

Across the compound in a rarely visited hut paced one agitated Nigel McIntyre. Taylor had assigned him to the structure, giving him and it disinteresting titles to conceal their true purpose. Yes, people, experts, they were all his to allocate how he saw fit and resources, human or otherwise, were always in short supply, yet Taylor had permitted himself this possibly indiscretion. McIntyre's work produced nothing to eat or wear. Nothing to trade. In this world populated by average citizens - average being the earners of two or more PhDs - McIntyre was the only cosmologist slash physicist slash botanist - and his work area was completely devoid of plants. Instead, the room was occupied by computers screens and notes written on the walls.

"McIntyre," Commander Taylor acknowledge the single occupant in the room before entering. It was a name rarely uttered about Terra Nova, and even less by Taylor.

"No, no, no," muttered McIntyre, not aware that he was no longer alone.

"McIntyre!"

"This is all wrong."


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note**: If you like time traveling as much as our pet caveman, then you're warmly invited to check out the **Phil of the Future** group here at FanFiction. Right next door to 2149, our characters originally hale from 2121 - my, how things did change. Don't bother to make a reservation, Time Traveler - we already know when you're coming, and whom you're smuggling along for the ride.

Disclaimer: My attorneys have informed me that my ownership of Terra Nova in 2149 does not extend to earlier time periods in my own timeline nor alternative timestreams. Fuha.

**Equipoise**

by CraftyNotepad

For a planner, Commander Taylor wasn't the patient sort. He wanted answers, not explanations or puzzles - answers and now, not later. McIntyre; however, he didn't push as hard. From past history, Taylor knew that it would just make McIntyre take longer to spill what he knew, so instead he looked around for a stool to get comfortable on and maybe some of that acidic pseudo coffee. He found both.

"You haven't found a way to make this fuha taste any better," Nathaniel Taylor stated as was his style, as an indisputable fact, not a question. It did snap his personal researcher back to the reason he sent for his only supervisor.

"Look at this," Nigel McIntyre invited with something ... sadness? ... in his voice.

Nathaniel glanced at the wall, half filled with calculations like some 19th Century blackboard, only here Nigel had used charcoal to work out his math homework. It scared Nathaniel when he realized he actually recognized some of the calculations - not that he understood them, but they were familiar. They were very much like the ones his son left on the rocks beneath the waterfall. What had McIntyre uncovered at last?

"Looks ... interesting. Tell me about it."

"It doesn't make sense."

"Not to me. I'm not scientist."

"That's not it. I mean the answers don't make sense. You're going to have to hurry."

Taylor had more questions, but knew when to be quiet and let Nigel organize his thoughts. He sipped the "coffee" again, grimacing in regret for doing so. He watched the scientist open a couple dozen images which were being projected upon the walls and ceilings within the bungalow. Star charts, neutrino emissions, even more calculations, and something else familiar: the Probe, the one perched atop its roost with pilgrim's names scratched into it.

"We shouldn't be here, and before you ask, I don't mean 'shouldn't', I mean 'can't'," Nigel McIntyre clarified.

Taylor had had enough. Time to go.

"It's the Probe. It's not ours."

That statement made no sense in Taylor's thinking. As the first person to arrive from the future, he was here when it was located here. He hadn't found it himself, but was present when it was dragged into the Fort, now his command center at Terra Nova. It's discovery didn't change a thing, other than to create a useless monument. If he had had his way, the Probe would have been scrapped for it's metal long ago and turned into something useful, such as fishing hooks, scalpels, or needles. They needed metal and that probe was left there on its pedestal to rust away. Okay, so it wouldn't rust, but then neither would the tools that could be fashioned from it. But he had to pick his battles as the leader of Terra Nova, and appeasing the people with their version of a cannon in town's square was a easy, if wasteful, accomplishment.

"I was there, Nigel. It's the probe that was sent into the rift. It's the reason the governments decided to give their thumb's up to Terra Nova. No probe's signal back then, so this is a different timestream. Are you trying to tell me that it's not?"

McIntre shook his head no. "It's a different timestream, alright -"

"Okay then -"

"-but it's not 'our' probe."

Nathaniel Taylor hated eggheads at a certain level, the level that made his noggin hurt and this qualified. "If it's not our Probe, then whose is it?"

"We did."

Passing thought ran through Taylor's mind, something about Nigel's leg and a flesh wound ... reluctantly he shook it off. This was getting no where fast; he tried another tact, "Explain."

"We sent it, but not us. Another us. Let me show you." Twin images of Earth appeared on the wall, the upper one was the Earth they came from, below it was an Earth sporting continents in a Pangeanian arrangement. "We sent the Probe here." A little golden sphere icon raced from Earth I to Earth II. "Or so we thought." Nigel McIntyre took a deep breath, then manipulated the images. An identically arranged pair of Earths were now beside the first set. "I opened up the Probe. Its outside shell appears identical to our probe."

"What good would it do you to look inside? Are you an expert on what its guts look like?"

"No, I'm not, and I don't know anyone here that is?"

"Then why?"

"I reinserted its power core."

"YOU WHAT?"

"Three weeks ago. It wasn't Sixers' sabotage. I borrowed the power core for less than five minutes, just long enough to reboot the device and take a reading. Like I said, I"m no expert, but its locator frequency is simply to record. The power core was replaced without danger to the colony."

Lucky, thought Taylor, but he kept listening.

"It's not the same frequency as on record."

"Oh, come on, Nigel. Someone would have-"

"Would they? Why? In a primeval world filled with sticks and overgrown lizards, why should the notion of verifying the frequency being sent out come up when they can see with their own eyes that what they expected to find is before them?"

"So where the fuha did it come from; aliens?"

"We sent it, but not us; another us." Taylor watched the Probe's icon depart the new future Earth and end up on their Terra Nova Earth. THe frequencies simply don't match up. Then a third set Earths lit up and their Earth's probe landed on the new dino-inhabited Earth. "See? Our probe traveled 85 million years to another Earth, just not the one we're standing on. This probe? It originated from a parallel world. Nearly identical, yet different."

"Different enough to bring us the Sixers?"

"Yes, that's my theory! The rift is stable, but the reason it can't be accessed anytime we wanted is because its portal openings shift."

"When?"

"I don't know."

"But this would explain the Sixers, why their pilgrimage was different, and why they have a different agenda for the future here. They're from another Earth."

The two men let this settle in their thinking.

The commander broke the silence first, "I don't see how this helps us, Nige. We can't control the rift and the Sixers are already here." Sigh. "Thanks for the coffee," he somehow found an empty surface to leave it on, "but I've got to have a dozen fire pits ready to burn iron stalks in less than a week."

"But."

"Let me know when you have figured out something useful, like those rock drawings, until then-"

"Sixers!"

That got Taylor's attention. He shut up to hear what was next.

"Every pilgrim brings along with him personal belongings. And among the toothbrushes and pocket knives brought through the timestream, each backpacker brings along a bit of technology by way of a pocket 'puter - and, and EACH 'puter has as standard equipment a complete account of the history, science, art, and music of the world." Taylor figured out the rest. There were Sixers still here that had not left the Terra Nova compound with Mira, and while Taylor knew who they were and even suspected some of communicating with Mira, he couldn't force them to talk - but he could seize their 'puters, at least temporarily. He could at last know his enemy, what makes it tick; what's more, a 'puter could be scanned from each new pilgrimage, old ones, too, for that matter, and see which ones matched or approached matching his own. As for the Sixers's 'puters, they could provide a template of what to be on the outlook for.

"That's more like it, Nigel. Thanks for the intel. Good work."

"But I'm not done," Nigel pleaded, now pointing at the rock drawing images.

"Damn," thought Taylor aloud. He should have got while the getting was good and he was ahead.

"We shouldn't be here. By arriving here, we should be altering this planet's future human civilization, just as our probe should be doing to the next, and the one another 'us' transported here and so on."

"But they didn't find the probe's signal in the future, Nigel."

McIntyre rolled his eyes, "Oh, come on, Nate. You can't be that naive. An environment collapsing? Do you really think anyone had any choice? They lied, Nate. I just can't figure out why we're still here."

"So what do I do with this information?"

"Make every request for provisions from the future like it is our last. I don't know how many more trips the rift is going to handle before one side or the other collapses."

Nathaniel Taylor left McIntyre's hutch and took the long way back to his command center. Lots to think about, that was for certain. Sixers, iron stalks, his son's involvement, and now multiple Earths. Nate found himself wandering, noticing the patrols, capturing bits of conversation escaping homes. Is it possible that these people he risked his life for weren't even from his Earth? He found himself walking by the Probe, of all things. He had never carved his initials by the Probe, but now? Now, he decided without any doubts, he's rewrite his next supply request for the pilgrimage after the next one, and he'd make a wish regarding it: "I hope you can bring us some decent coffee beans from wherever you are, Pilgrims."

-end-


End file.
